With the release of V6, Curl applications will be able to interact with Internet based services using Javascript. This opens Curl to the whole world of enterprise mashups. Here are some thoughts on where Curl mashups might provide interesting application in the future.
Andy Dornan defines three types of enterprise mashups in "Mashup Basics: Three for the Money" at Network Computing. They are:
- Presentation Mashups - These involve the end user's ability to tailor what they see on the desktop and represent integration at the presentation or visual layer. Examples include sites like my.yahoo and iGoogle. This is the simplest type of mashup as it involves very little real integration allowing the selection and placement of applets into the desktop view.
- Data Mashups - These almost always involve programming to integrate different data stores into a new consolidated view. A good example in B2C is Zillow.com that integrates maps, real-estate offerings and local county records to give a consolidated view of local housing markets.
- Logic Mashups - These are the most complex type and always involve programming as they combine 2 or more applications and their workflow into a new application. Comparison-shopping sites illustrate this by integrating product and price research with the purchasing process.
This taxonomy provides a good framework to show how Curl might be used in future enterprise mashups. In upcoming posts I'll be considering each in detail but here is my initial thinking.
*Curl Presentation Mashup*- The simplest Curl presentation mashup would involve making Curl applications available as a portlets in the major portal frameworks (Weblogic, Websphere and Sharepoint). Having Curl applications as portlets would let end users select and position them within their portal view.
Curl Data Mashup - Curl is best suited for interactive displays of large complex datasets. This makes Curl an interesting option for data mashups. Paisley, a GRC vendor uses Curl to provide visualization of risk and compliance data integrated from the various departmental and organizational data stores that contain that information. As this type of data visualization becomes more sophisticated Curl users could automatically create new visualizations by gathering different databases on the fly.
Curl Logic Mashup - Curl provides a platform for the implementation of web applications that could only have been implemented as client server applications in the past. Curl's enables the full power of the native desktop hardware similar to a desktop application but delivers the application over the web. In client server applications most of the business logic is on the client but as we moved to the web all this logic moved to the middle application server tier. Over the years the application server tier has become very evolved to the point where application logic is now assembled without programming. A similar evolution has barely begun on the client side for RIA. The opportunity is there to create a much more evolved RIA stack that would enable client-side logic mashups.
Richard